I’ll tell you. You can hear it on the map.

At the window, on the terraces,
clapping, yelling, cheering,
jiggling piggy banks, blowing toy horns,
banging pots and pans, even ringing
some gone-very-far-astray cowbells.

in their cars, honking horns,
at the dinner table, inside,
families with little kids cheering,
while supper super cools, no matter.

It is the moment of our everyday,
when we thank those whose who
risk their lives to save, so we may survive
to live to see our children’s children thrive.

the EMT’s, doctors, nurses, firemen,
the police, even the subway & bus drivers,
who take them to their jobs, and honor with
extra banging and unsilenced tears for

those who have passed in performance,
their unseen courage is marked on our eyes,
their extraordinary service to us is a forever
medaled upon our skin, in our lungs, it is
their air we breathe, freely...
our living keepsake of their duty.

4/14/2020
7:30pm

There are more poems inside me, but I intuit it is longer fair to impose on you by sharing more.  The deep seeded infection of my spirit waxes and wanes, and there is no antidote, and unlike the virus itself, there never will be, a future cure, an inexpensive replacement cost for the spirit spent, the time and futures spirited away.

Perhaps you recall I was one mile away from Ground Zero on September 11th.  Rarely do I walk there.

The coronavirus poetry inserts itself unaided, never asking permission, a like minded, but a contra-cousin to the coronavirus.

I live in New York City, the epicenter where now, close to 800 die daily.

Normally, about 25 bodies a week are interred on Hart island, mostly for people whose families can't afford a funeral, or who go unclaimed by relatives.  In recent days, though, burial operations have increased from one day a week to five days a week, with around 24 burials each day.^^

Each dies with no last words, no Kaddish recited, Last Rites, too late, no Ṣalāt al-Janāzah or Om Namo Narayanaya.  Each one, a numbered pine coffin, and each one will have at the very least, a poem of their own, so help me god.

Buried side by side in large trench, room plenty for new arrivals,
I hear the banging, protesting, resisting, this is not the way, I was promised, my ears left pounding!  Hillel, the great scholar in this dream, reminds that “the time is short, and the work is great.”          

He paraphrases, though, “the bodies many, the poems too few.”

There ain’t no anonymity in heaven, but I’ll reconfirm that with you later.

~for John Prine~

she’s eye closed, playing sleepy possum,
so I stealthy stroke her cheek, she, all smiling,
then I nose tickle my sweet-love, now frowning,
till I cease and desist, go back to stroking,
then I’m her good loving man once again

tune comes in my head from out of left field,
start to tap the beat, pic my guitar strings, roaming
all over her smooth features, now she’s all aroused,
cause she knows what I’m about and this strumming,  
why that ain’t allowed, so she knocks my fingers away

later, sneak into the kitchen, she’s fussin’ - could be,
cleaning, could be cooking, but soon she ain’t moving,
cause she’s just listening to the new tune first played
earlier that morn, on her features born, a love song,
calling that song “Playing with My Love’s Face”

now she’s grabbing the biggest knife I ever seen,
waving it to and too close to fro, in my direction general,
waving it like a baton, conducting my song, singing along,
making up her own lyrics, whole stanzas, now it’s her song,
****, if that ain’t “the way the world goes round”

a woman comes to me at 2:20am,
from across the world, asking if I am that cool jew,
occupant/son of the unholy hours when death and crucifixion,
them two old friends, are waving temptation with both hands,
never mentioning heaven, offering .99 cents of sanitized compliments,
which for a fifth rate amateur writer is revolutionary,
as close as you will ever come to global recognition

that woman says, yes! you’re that insufferable fool whose
suffering keeps us awake when he should be sleeping in the
half-death state, in the unholy hours, only reporting back
what he has seen across the borderline, in these times
when a thousand-die-a-day daily from suffering
that is uniquely human, a wracking medieval torture,
granting those viral messengers, slow extra pleasure

be nice to yourself for a change, write ‘bout what they want,
broken love and suicide, mundane pain, keep it plain, short!
easy stuff that sells records, making you not whisper words
never meant to be shared, the language of the unholy hours,
a dialect unique, that Google can’t quite rightly translate,
for not every vision is substitutable, suitable, rated G for babies, so,
keep it short like a miserable life that needs a prophecy to complete

48 hours ago thought I was infected, a glide path to rocky moon-smooth,
a landing where words unique, taken away, sealing your mouth with
tubed oxygen that inhibits thinking, air that might **** all of you, not just pain, but what makes you unique, your own 10 commandments
of speech, the old testament, the source book of insight into whatever
makes your lungs breath in rhythmic to heart beating, and dying
discordant disrupts the gene sequencing of inhaling and exhaling

the editors and the critics overlooking, that sit on both shoulders,
are already complaining, no más, no más, no más!
suture that incision, close your mouth, the unholy hours
need a special silence, Ruth’s lips that move but go unheard,
make no mistake, we want to listen in, voyeurs of visions
but we need you broken, we need a break, from confronting
the repeatedly delayed, but undeniable, the clockwork orange
second coming of the ungodly hours

4:02am
Sabato
4/11/20twenty
new york city of lips

making a living (writing poetry) in the time of Pandemic

listening to priest Leonard, while locked in my library-cell,
isolating my body to spare all the rest my very worst,
not forgetting that the heart that needs guarding,^
comes along to make sure I stay within in-sane lane

this poems allegorical title arrives like a hit pop song,
one you firm believing, of course, you know all the words,
no way, you don’t, like make a living writing poetry,
nah, you just make living, writing poetry

every lover found and lost, recorded, every turning point turned
into a lyric stylized, every incident memorized, timed ‘n rhymed,
so total recall even in a disorderly meter still unvarnished survives,
and that’s how my living became such well paid poetry

playing my own life backwards, praying for all life forward,
don’t intubate me if it comes to that, cause I’ll be needing vocals,
them chords vital to record my fellow Jerusalem-bound pilgrims who
appoint a poet-in-residence as recording secretary of the Covid ward,
to make their living, not their dying, poetry, in the time of Pandemic




April 10, Twenty-Twenty
10:53am
Good Friday
Passover, 2nd day, 5780